Olympic Brewery hails new 3.2m euro investment in Sindos

A new investment totaling € 3.2 million was made by Olympic Brewery with the new production line at the company's plant in Sindos, Thessaloniki.

This is part of the big investment plan of Olympic Brewery, with a target in 2019, of a total value of 45 million euros.

It is worth noting that the total investments made by the Olympic Brewery, a member of Carlsberg (51%), in 2017 at the Sindos plant amount to 4.6 million euros, while in the period 2015-2018, total investments amounted to 12.2 million euros.

The CEO of Olympic Brewing Dejan Beko, in a meeting with reporters, stressed that parent company Calsberg trusts Greece and believes there is scope for new investments in the country. It is also indicative that the new investment is part of a major plan for Olympic Brewery, with a target in 2019, of a total value of 45 million euros.

The new line will use the Draughtmaster system. Draughtmaster is a compact draught beer dispenser that uses smaller 20 litre PET kegs instead of steel kegs, suiting those that require less volume.

The self-cleaning system requires only water, a power supply, drainage and space for installation, with CO2 replaced with an in-built air compressor.

In the 1950s, steel kegs were introduced for high-volume outlets. But the on-trade has evolved; it is more food-led and beer consumption is lower than steel kegs were designed for.

Carlsberg says that PET kegs offer a long shelf life compared with steel kegs, which have an average shelf life of around one week, while the Draughtmaster will keep beer fresh for 31 days.

This is due to the need to pressurise steel kegs with CO2, whereas Draughtmaster uses air only to push the beer out, meaning that nothing touches the beer from when it leaves the brewery until it goes in the glass.

Draughtmaster is currently operating in 16 countries in Europe, including Greece.